Categoria: Jazz

Two landmark experts of contemporary music like Alex Ross and Nate Chinen published at almost same time two stories connected by an hidden thread. The former beginning from the rapper KendrickLamar being awarded the Pulitzer prize, traditionally reserved to classical composers, to trigger a discussion on the status of contemporary classical music; the latter contextualizing a 2009 anecdote, the backfiring coming from Kurt Rosenwinkel in direction of VijayIyer as the pianist was awarded of a MacArthur grant. Apparently linked only by the fray between musical personalities theme, they are instead reflecting and discussing on a deeper level the relationship between tradition and any so-called avantgarde in music. Both of those resonated to me when meeting few days later with the groundbreaking Trio HLK, who just released their debut Standard Time. The title is a clear reference to standards and how to play them today, while in slightly different fashion, not exactly as a novice swing trio would. As Ant Law, one third of the trio on guitars, says it loud and clear the title is supposed to be a little provocative for us to say: this how you did it then, maybe we can do it like this now!

Not sure this is exactly the way an old school player would play Blue in Green or The Way You Look Tonight. Or at least hire the Edinburgh based trio to play jazz standards with. Even considering this trio seems to play everything, but jazz. Put an heavy usage of polyrhythms together with a jazz and classical background in a complex and inter knotted tapestry, driven by the connection of drummer Richard Kass, pianist Richard Harrold and guitarist Ant Law. The three are unloading a powerful mixture of subtle delicacy together with an inner strenght. A sort of djent jazz, or maybe contemporary polyrhythmic music, or maybe a math rock bop. Everything in Standard Time is around the rhythm. It is obviously the most primal thing. Any human being kind of experience, from the first sensation of your heartbeat of your mother’s heartbeat when being in the womb, the polyrhythm of the two heartbeats tells Ant Law. Still this element is merely a starting point. They are not focusing on rhythm as a mean for itself. Instead as a direction to the true core of their search, which is the perception of the rhythm. Compositionally a lot of the tunes kind of play around with the perception of time, the perception of rhythm. A lot of things are kind of being stretched. A bit that might be conventionally, might be distorted to stretch the rhythm to compress the rhythm, about playing around with the perception of time, says Richard Harrold.

The title Standard Time is supposed to be a little provocative for us to say: this how you did it then, maybe we can do it like this now!

Trio HLK was born when RichardKass and RichardHarrold met in Edinburgh and started developing a commong ground for a polyrhythmic exploration. As they were wanting to work as a trio, and looking to unconventionally fit the last third of the line-up with a guitarist, they met Ant Law on 2015 new year’s eve and decided to play together. If new years’s day good intentions for upcoming year are never the basis of something concrete -losing weight plans?, this is evidently the exception that proves the rule. RichardKass remembers how they transitioned from a duo to a trio based line-up: we just started playing together and Richard Harrold had some musics he’d written and I liked that. There was some stuff in there which I’d start to get into, some micro rhythmical ideas which were kind of aligned with things I was interested and I was kind of really into. We sort of had a couple of other people as third members, which I didn’t feel they worked out. We thought of Ant because I’ve met Ant a while ago. I didn’t know him well, but I was aware of the music he was doing, it was very rhythmical, it contained the same information in some of pieces we were working on. The three of them followed-up that day and they started rehearsing, practicing extensively, constantly structuring and de-structuring their music. A mixture of classically-influenced-meets-jazz -no wonder Harrold, who’s the main composer of the material, studied composition at London’s Royal Academy of Music and then at Yale School of Music in US. Putting all their influences in a bucket, they range from an extreme to another: from classical composer ElliottCarter to the influencing Swedish death metal band Meshuggah, from Armenian pianist TigranHamasyan to senior jazz icon SteveColeman. And finally those influences are kind of secondary, in comparison to rhythmic exploration for itself. Says Richard Kass: one thing that unites us is that we are all influenced in rhythm. It’s all music which is very involved in rhythm all being a slightly different context. We are very interested in contemporary classical music, jazz, lots of other music, folk music from certain parts of the world. Everything which is very heavy on rhythmic language. We are very passionate about.

None of the pieces in Standard Time can be considered a replication of a standard. Still each is borrowing something from a jazz standard or a popular jazz lick. Starting from first track Smalls, it is quite impossible to unravel the thread the band indicates between it and Blue in Green. The evocative descending line that BillEvans painted at opening for MilesDavis‘s barely delicate trumpet is almost echoed by Harrold‘s descending piano main theme. But listening to intricate mute cymbal riff on the opening, is not quite as JimmyCobb would have played it. SteveLehman adds reverbered echoes played in a fortissimo and brings the track in the area of a sort of tribal flavor, while Ant Law puts the things immediately in a certain direction adding a distorted single note Meshuggah-like polyrhythmic pattern on the lower register. When approaching first solo, still the rhythmic pattern remains ambiguous and impossible to interpret. Piano solo enters in balancing jazz and classically influences with melodicity and clever rhythmic patterns: but the it is quite impossible to keep attention away from the interaction between the dynamic melodies expressed by piano and the crazy meters played by the rhythmic side, as Ant Law plays the lower strings of the 8-stringed guitar almost like a bass would.

SteveLehman, who guests second solo, is really not a new for such intricate environments. He feels well at his ease like he did in his Demian as Posthuman or latest Selebeyone, or when playing aside VijayIyer in his most recent and celebrated sextet. RichardHarrold says about Steve Lehman: I found very interesting to collaborate with people who have very unique voice and very unique approach. Steve for me is definitely one of those people. I almost thought he really not being as a sax player, even though he is of course a sax player. He doesn’t really play like a sax player in a conventional way. He’s got a very distinctive tone, he’s got a very distinctive language, harmonically, melodically if you want to call it melodically I wouldn’t say ideally melodic in the way he approaches music in general just in term of his rhythmic approach and harmonic approach. Also AntLaw acknowledges the importance of adding a musician such as him: who are the players who are working with this deep rhythmic music? probably 9 or 10 living people. Steve Lehman, David Binney, maybe Chris Potter, maybe Mark Shim, maybe Greg Osby, Steve Coleman of course. But Steve Lehman is the only one who’s interested in contemporary classical music. Adding groove, slowing down patterns, playing with subtle delicacy or tenderness out of the impressive machinery of the underlying codes, he seems always to reveal hidden rhythms in the rhythms themselves.

In the middle part of track Law and Harrold bring back the descending cadence of the main theme and put it in a sort of out of phase question and answer between them, a chaotic spiral free fall. The ending coda is even more ferocious with quiet and loud moments driven by the heavy-distorted guitar. It might sound like what Richard Harrold is doing is out of time -says Ant Law–, but sometimes the rhythm structural cycle is so complex, that it actually sounds you can’t hear what’s going on. But usually there is some underlying pulse there. That’s one of the reasons it takes so long to learn because most of music is in 4 or 3. But here we have the solo section in the piece Smalls, where does it go… 3 4 3 3 4 4 3 3 4 3 3 4 3 3 and then something like that again. The whole thing is like maybe a 111 beats long before it repeats! So if your ear is searching for it, it sounds random. Of course it is not random, we are all playing very precisely together. That’s one of the effects I think it is important to hear. Sometimes it seems to be chaotic or very abstract but yeah we are playing together.

Reworking and devouring their pieces until a final disruption, this is the practice of this trio, often blurring the lines between what’s written and what’s improvised. I want there to be a pattern that is recognizable that is then distorted or disrupted a lot of the time -explains Harrold. Not the case in all pieces, just thinking in a general sort of sense. For me generally when I am listening to music that I really like, I like to be in a song that I can follow, a song that I can latch onto it, but also a song that gives me surprises and stays interesting. If things get a bit too repetitive, a bit too predictable, then I lose interest. Interestingly they started their disrupting practice from Blue in Green, which was already ahead of its time. Ted Gioia writes about this track: the casual listener could be forgiven for thinking that the work is just a free-form improvisation, without clear beginning or end [Ted Gioia, The Jazz Standards]. Their practice of disrupting the music goes often in direction of exploring the listener’s perception work. There aren’t a lot of polyrhythmic music will often set up two or three rhythmic patterns and just let them play out and finally allow them to synch and then go out of synch -says Harrold. A lot of time when I am working with those things I like to disrupt them once they become unpredictable. That’s really my own perception whether that’s predictable or not, but maybe set two things in opposition for a short while and then play with them a little bit so they are no longer predictable and allow them to become predictable again. That process is often quite intuitive. That’s just my own playing through things a lot. Tapping through them, taking things out, putting things back in until I reach a point where I am happy with how predictable is versus how unpredictable is. It’s quite normal, quite an organic process of numeric patterns that work together and then there’s an human element of disruption that goes in there as well.

There are probably some other people out there technically accomplished that can do that, but they might not have such a vision of what they want to do when they are giving this music what they can bring to says RichardKass about the guesting musicians in Standard Time. Dame Evelyn Glennie has become a steady partner with the trio after the recording, siding them even in a the extensive UK tour they had after the release date. Being a percussion icon in the classical and avantgarde work, her partnership did not add just visibility to the trio effort, but impressed a landmark on the tracks. As Richard Harrold regarding her: she’s done so many really really improvisational projects, but she is just for me completely different approach. She doesn’t come from that kind of strict rhythmic improvisatory background, but she has this incredible palette, this incredible orchestral sense. And the interaction is even increasing during the tour, as the tracks, so intricate and heavily composed, show how flexible they can ben in terms of live rendition. Ant Law indicates that the effort by the vibraphonist guest shows how the band is still in the learning curve: it’s funny that we are playing more live gigs with Eveyln Glennie, she starts to do more and more crazy things that she didn’t do on the album. I feel excited, I kind of wish we could go back and record. But I am excited we can do now that we know what we can do. Now that we know what she can do, she knows what is welcome, she becomes more bold with each gig.

Starting with an improvisation around what will be the opening chord of second track Extra Sensory Perception, piano and vibraphone create a dreamy and shiny environment. They are playing mainly with chord extensions, adding slowly an increased speed with upward scales. When we reach the opening section, a descending cadence enters in: again a MilesDavis track is referenced here, this time the WayneShorter composed E.S.P. While the original was a masterpiece of fluid movement, of smoother transitions that mimick a sort of city traffic, the three here borrow only with the initial bars of the theme and stretch/enlarge it at their own will during the whole piece. Glennie‘s solo progressively accelerates: she is playing around overlapping rhythms, seemingly following an hidden mathematical proportion between each of them, like she’s moving through a secret Fibonacci-sequence ladder. Next is the angular and dissected solo by Ant Law, who places himself in a delicate balance between a crazy shredder attitude and a warm soothing jazz tone. Again the initial theme is brought in while the trio + one moves up and down the accelerating throttle, playing with listener’s expectations through an ever changing riddle, as the score shows here. Richard Kass‘s role is not merely being the driver of the rhythm, while more regarded as solo player with special duties: often I am trying to look at what information is already present in the composition and work out either. As Ant would say how to unify some of the rhythms that have been composed. Sometimes I am trying mark out the meters and then play around or on on top of them or across of them. What I find most useful is to cause tension and release by playing across the bar or across the meter and then resolving it at somewhere. So sometimes when it happens, you have this as Richard Harrold called it, two things fighting, two patterns going on at the same time and some point they come back around. For me the effect of that is a tension and then a release. And for some listeners perception of what one of these is the time and which one is the other rhythm that I kind of play along.

I take things out, put things back in until I reach a point where I am happy with how predictable is versus how unpredictable is.

Being based in a city like Edinburgh played a key role in the development of their sound. An ideal environment for cross-pollination as well as for allowing things slowly grow through practice, like Law mentions: It can be more difficult in London or somewhere in New York, because people are so frantically busy just running around.While London is the center of the new celebrated British jazz, the three seem to move sideways and to take time to let things ferment. So Jazz Bar, Edinburgh’s main venue for jazz music, acted like an hub and magnet for local jazz artistis. Ant Law is probably the one of three who gained most exposure so far. With two albums at his own name and a third to be released in November 2018 for Edition Records, he has already garnered the attention of many British musicians. The longtime collaboration with saxophonist TimGarland was also a showcase of his abilities, including the participation on acclaimed 2016 effort One. This time he retains his usual mathematical approach to rhythm and incorporates the drier and wicked sound of his Schecter customized 8-strings guitar: when I was young I was looking at how many strings can you have on a guitar? 6-7-8 strings!? and then [when entering Trio HLK] I finally thought ‘The band doesn’t have bass, I am buying it!’ So I bought the 8-strings and I thought ‘Oh god!’. Still today we are practicing and I find it very difficult, sometimes I get lost in the extra strings I confuse.It is so unusual to see this instrument in a jazz line-up, more familiar in djent bands such as Animals as Leaders; but in a moment that metal is gaining more and more attention among jazz players –JamieSaft & Bobby Previte‘s Doom Jazz, DanWeiss‘s Starebaby, Tigra Hamasyan‘s Mockroot or Matt Mitchell‘s A Pouting Grimace to name few- this should not be a surprise.

A long solo intro by SteveLehman breaks the frantic mood, but still prepares for another rhythmic battle in the approaching painS. The track starts with the dialogue between two swinged chords and an intricated proggy riff until they land to the main theme: the opening descending chord of Chick Corea‘s Spain is here the only fathomable element that hints at the jazz standard, as we move forward in the intricate interpolation of rhythms and counterpoint. Piano adds more bass and often duplicates guitar’s fatty lines -to mention that Harrold is using a Moog in live context- while Lehman explores creepy and angry melodies. Each section of the piece is a study in rhythmology for itself: exploring juxtapositions, shiftings, secret relationships until the thread that unites it all is barely visible. Dux is opened by a distorted cuban-like rhythm by Richard Kass -like a son drum kit played by DonCaballero– that piano echoes with the movement in parallel octaves typical in the music from the American island. RichardHarrold‘s solo is linked by an invisible thread with the rest of the band, making it impossible to understand where writing ends and improvisation begins. If you take a seat at one of our shows, there will be a percentage of 60% written 40% improvised, says RichardKass, whileRichardHarrold adds: Some of the sections, that the one you got there, have a kind of rhythmic structure that one actually has even chord symbols, so that’s more of a kind of a traditional jazz approach to improvisation. Some of the other forms are similar but with more complicated rhythms. we have for instance a 12 bar structure that has changing meters but with specific harmonic chord changes. It is hard to discern whether this is an improvised section. Some of the other pieces have sections that are for example a full bar rhythmic clue, there’s open free improvisation where this kind of rhythmic pattern is independent.

They are working to produce new music for second album and in bringing new standards re-alive. Be prepared for CharlieParker‘s Anthropology: it will be“Anthropometricks” and it will be on our next album. It is a monster – 10 pages of music with two solos!Following a clear vision, applying a different approach, working at a slower pace and cross-pollinating their influences seem to be the ground rules at the basis of Trio HLK. While their music is a parade of mathematical thinking and disrupting practices, still it is full of beauty, instinct, improvisation and immediacy, for how strange it might sound. This is the secret behind a band that is hopefully just at the starting point of their learning curve.

My goal was to form a band with musicians with different backgrounds and tastes. As a guitar player progressive and metal music have influenced me most. Our drummer, Rouzbeh Fadavi, comes from more jazzy background, our pianist, Mazyar Younesi, is graduated in classical music and also a conductor, and our woodwind player, Soheil Peyghambari, has more folk music background. Ehsan Sadigh, guitarist and one of the founders of Teheran based Quartet Diminished, points very clearly in his words at what were his purposes since the start of his band. Different identities collide in four different people’ backgrounds, western and eastern cultures clash, electric clashes with acoustic, Iranian classical clashes with western jazz and metal. QuartetDiminished is first and foremost a battle scene, where notes, modes, rhythms bring their history in and meet.

But wouldn’t this mix of influences risk to fall into chaos? Musicologist Carl Dalhaus once told that we should not talk about ‘identities’ in music, better to use the word ‘Wesen‘. The translation of this german term might be ‘being’, or better ‘consciousness of being’. When human beings are born, they gradually start creating their consciousness by difference: I am not the world outside [Marcello Sorce Keller Identities in traditional and western musics in Enciclopedia della Musica, Il Sole 24 Ore]. An identity is built upon a difference with other identities. This approach applied to music hints at how every culture might be seen as a separate from another. In the speed of light collapsing universe of today’s music cultures, bringing together the more distant sounds is becoming the rule. And the result is often a chaos producing system of multiple influences blended together. But is mixing cultures creating a new identity or is it just a plain juxtapositions of sounds? From my point of view as listener, I appreciate when the culture clashing process creates new identities. If you are looking for this option as well, then put Quartet Diminished on the top of your wishlist.

Take the sixteen minutes of Cluster, third track of their 2018 effort Station Two. While the length might surely appeal progressive rock fans, this is not exactly a typical ‘prog epic’, nor a classical suite. But something that fits in the middle. The slightly disturbing repetitions of piano intro’s power chords pave the road for the drums and guitar’ grandeur metal entry. Piano and bass clarinet answers back each distorted chord, but there’s not time left to start the headbanging. A sudden interruption places the piano back in. Younesi initiates a rubato dialogue with Peyghambari‘ssaxophone with a sort of dorian mode feeling. An unison cascading line played by piano and guitar falls at the moment when the bass clarinet and drums may start back the sound and fury.

These frequent start and stops are the core of Quartet Diminished‘s music, thanks to the unique approach of the only single rhythmic element of the band, the drummer Rouzbeh Fadavi. A disquieting sense of disruption of our concept of the uninterrupted standard western song. If we take the perspective of traditional Iranian classical music and the music system of the avaz, which is based on the sequences of different moods and modes -to roughly translate that, then this structure seems no wonder. EhsanSadig offers his point of view on the traditional Iranian music: The influence of Iranian rhythms and melodies has precipitated in our subconscious somehow. Therefore, we don’t use them deliberately in many occasions, they just penetrate in our music in a subtle way. Coming back to the point of Cluster we left off, the rhythmic section in 3+3+3+2 first explodes vigorously, then placidly moves back to intro theme, while Ehsan Sadig plays shrilling bendings over a phrygian traditional scale. Suddenly piano’s descending rumblings move the atmosphere to a rondo-style -with the absence of the drums- that morphs in an intricate 5+3+4 jazz-rock rhythmic section. When the drum enters again in, Peyghambari is left the space to fill with his intense and prolonged folk echoes. If we ever looked for a definition of Cluster, then this might be: a chamber electro-acoustic suite played by traditionally influenced progressive musicians [!].

Quartet Diminished are now approaching their second release, but their roots are in the initial line-up for the release as trio earlier in 2013. As EhsanSadig tells me: Our first band was called ‘Whisper’, including drums (Rouzbeh), Guitar (Me) and bass (Nima). When the bass player left the band, I decided to replace it with saxophone (Parviz). Diminished was the name of my first released album. Ending up being released under the name ofEhsan Sadig Trio, Diminished is a distinctive sound album: traditional music played in a ritual-like context. Instruments alternate often in solo or duos throughout the release, the rests are frequently taking the scene more than the music itself. A subtle sense of tension pervades this work, while guitar is not necessarily playing always and everywhere. With the entrance of new members, the project slightly changed its sound:Mazyar Younesi (pianist and conductor) joined the band shortly after Parviz (sax player) left the band, so I decided to make a new quartet band. Then Peter Soleimanipour joined the quartet as woodwind player and the first album of quartet diminished (Station One) got released. Published by Hermes records in 2015, Station One is an intricate rhythms shift and a leap forward in their music making. While polyrhythmic layers blink at postminimal european bands such as Nik Bärtsch, the sounds are taking nourishment from multiple sources at once, thanks also to the decision to make their project unique with no bass instrument. Traditional music, classical, jazz: Station One is taking the roads of unexpectedness. After Peter left the quartet, Soheil Peyghambari joined us as our new woodwind player about 2 years ago and with the new lineup the second album of Quartet Diminished (Station Two).

The eponymous track opening Station Two is already a showcase of how these multiple sources of influence may collide and meet. After Ehsan Sadig‘s scratching on guitar strings collapses in all-band avant-like noise, then the guitarist creates a groove with a simple hypnotic repetition of a single note. The tap-your-feet pattern that follows is enriched by Soheil Peyghambari‘s deep bass clarinet, that is easy to compare to the rhythmic efforts by swiss Sha. And then it breaks in a stopping tension opening for piano solo: slowly built around jazz and traditional music atmospheres, it moves in a similar direction to what others, such like Tigran Hamasyan, are doing by mixing western and eastern traditions in the contemporary context. The grand finale with its long and aggressive notes repeated by whole band,comes again after a pause. Tension and sudden rests: those are the rules in Quartet Diminished music. They are always looking at managing the tension of the track in some way in between traditional ritual and western avantgarde music. Ehsan puts it in very easy manner: Iranian folk music is one of our influences since the Iranian ritual music is a branch of Iranian folk music more or less, and we’ve heard those melodies and ballads from our early childhood via media and etc..

The following track, Zone, has even more metal chamber moments for Ehsan Sadig to show his wide array of techniques. Ranging from palm muted to power chord, tapping and sweep picking arpeggios, his efforts are never appearing as effortless virtuoso exhibitionism. The initial drum rolling -which incidentally Sadig indicates as having been inspired by a kurdish rhythm- works as the preparation for the subsequent polyrhythmic layering between piano playing in a 12 on 4 feeling and guitar following a 3+4+3+4+3+4 pattern. Quartet Diminished are frequently working with slow intertwining tempos, which seems to let more easily explode the thrilling solos by Sadig on guitar or the folk embellished lyrical melodies by Peyghambari.

Moving through more pensive atmospheres, Mood II morphs in a Bärtsch-like ritual pattern after 5 minutes of dialogue between clarinet and guitar sustained by piano’s repeated chords. Then eventually explodes in a sort of orchestral finale via an ascending scale that liquefies the listener’s tension in a peaceful joy. Quartet Diminished alternates moments of improvisation to strictly written materials, often exposing it to multiple layers: Each track of ours is a result of a different procedure more or less, sometimes we extract the ideas from our improvises and then fix them by writing them. In other occasion, one of us might bring a written idea or phrase of his, then this written part will blend with improvises, individual ideas and transforms to a new creation which belongs to all of us. The closing Mood I is an ecstatic classical guitar work of art, we might find references someway in the Arabian music that influenced Spanish classical music. Clarinet is joining Sadig‘s delightful tunes in such a delicate manner that, when Younesi‘s lyrical voice enters in, it is almost impossible to distinguish each of them. They are moving us to an heavenly place we would like to sit in for the longest time possible.

Stations Two is a statement of identity from a band that moves in a unforeseen territory crossing avantgarde, ritual music, chamber orchestra and even metal and prog. Not a surprise that these guys are attracting the interest of so many fine producers such as ManfredEicher or LeonardoPavkovic. They are moving us in a modern ritual, a conscious and respectful ritual of the dialogue between multiple identities, that look at melting in a new identity.

You were talking recently about the meaning of our life, the unselfishness of art. Let’s take music, it’s really least of all connected […] Nonetheless the music miraculously penetrates into the very soul! What is resonating in us in answer to the harmonized noise? And turns it for us into the source of great delight. And unites us, and shakes us? What is its purpose? And, above all, for whom? You will say: for nothing, and for nobody, just so. Unselfish. Though it’s not so perhaps… For everything, in the end, has its own meaning. [Stalker, Andrej Tarkovskij 1979]

Two separate worlds meet, two distant cultures cross their multiple influences finding a common ground with unexpected easiness. Several references merge into the unique sound of Illusion of a Separate World. Slovakian guitarist David Kollar and Norwegian trumper ArveHenriksen blend their playing into shimmering soundscapes, ethnic influences, electronic rhythms and post-rock riffs. They manage to go straight to the core of things since the initial notes, never adding anything more than what’s needed. Not making any useless or unselfish music, they are always focused only on unleashing the hidden meaning that everything has, quoting Stalker by Andrei Tarkovsky.

Slovakian guitarist David Kollar earned an increasing interest in the avant guitar scene in recent times. Thanks to collaborations with King Crimson drummer PatMastelotto in KoMaRa project, along with trumpeter PaoloRanieri as third member. And also thanks to the invite by StevenWilson to play on two pieces of his latest To the Bone and to stand as opening act as solo soundscape guitar for his European leg. He does not play guitar only on his solo albums: every device might be a mean to contribute to an imaginative, spontaneous music. It is no coincidence that he alternates his guitar duties together with soundtrack composition. Improvising alone or in small groups (duo or trio), Kollar uses self-made guitar and complex pedalboard: an orthodox setup declined in an unorthodox manner in orchestral synth sounds, or in glitches and percussive noises made on the strings through bows, or still in roughly distorted lead guitars. Eivind Aarset, ChristianFennesz and DavidTorn are playing a reference role while listening to his music and it is the sound of the latter to be the main influence in this album.

David Kollar met Arve Henriksen in 2017 after a duo between the trumpeter with Fennesz. Kollar says: ‘I played last year on Spectacularefestival in Prague. I had a solo performance billed and after me there was Arve playing with Christian Fennesz. At the end of the festival we shared our emails and phone numbers. In few months we met again on the stage at Hevhetia festival in Slovakia‘. On the drive back home from the gig the two decided to record an album. In December 2017 Kollar spent a week in Faenza, Italy, host of the trumpeter and fellow friend Paolo Ranieri, with whom he also shares the duties in The Blessed Beat trio. During the stay, he begun to outline the tracks for Illusion of a Separate World. He recorded soundscapes, riffs, sketches of tracks on a daily basis, almost in the form of a personal diary. This final resulted in 17 tracks, of which 12 would have been selected for the recordings of Arve Henriksen‘s trumpet and eletronics.

The both of them show such an intimacy that it is difficult to conceive this collaboration as a product of two separate worlds in studio rather than a joint live setting. NightNavigator opens with Kollar playing broadened guitar synth carpets. We are in a journey through multiple layers of melodies in which guitar and trumpet alternatively take and release the lead. The superb orchestration of the sound layers highlights both Kollar‘s skills as soundtrack composer as well as the mastery of Henriksen in camouflaging his trumpet in whatever context it is. The introduction paves the road to Mirror Transformation: the clean guitar plays a couple of strummed chords, which are left resonating as a carpet for Henriksen‘s. With his typical fluctuating and breathing sound, he imitates the Persian ney flute, while playing a dorian melody. As soon as this is running out, a descending arpeggio enters in. The deep basses of the lowered guitar tuning, the pace recalling a Eastern Europe melody, and yet an almost post-rock sound, all these things allow Kollar to build a hieratic scenario, almost a sacrifice ritual; Henriksen doubles it with an unexpected guttural voice inspired by Siberian music.

‘I’ve heard a lot of Don Cherry and Miles Davis, but Nils Petter [Molvær] and Jon [Hassell] are the ones I’ve been most inspired by. They had a very personal sound and I did not, but one day Nils made me listen to the Japanese shakuhachi, and then I realized that this was the road that, with my trumpet, I was looking for.[Arve Henriksen in The Sound of the North, Luca Vitali, backtranslated from Italian]. In the last thirty years Arve Henriksen transformed the instrument thanks to his unique technique and to the choice of an intonation influenced by ethnic wind instruments filtered through reverbs, pitch shifters or distortions. He alternates trumpet playing to singing – an ethereal, almost contralto voice- and to the electronics -laptops and drum machine boxes. Ethnic and electronic, improvisation in jazz and outside: starting from the noise improvised outfits of Supersilent, to the more experimental folk experiences with Terje Ingsuset or with Trio Medieval, then duos with Jan Bang or with DavidSylvian, just to mention the collaborations in the latest years. Not to forget the solo career with Rune Grammofon and ECM: 2017’s release Towards Language was a manifesto of the same minimalist poetic of total reduction of sound and melodic space that started with Chiaroscuro (2004) and earlier with Sakuteiki (2001).

Creating so much with so few: comparing ArveHenriksen not only with NilsPetterMolvær, but also with a musicist so geographically and far away such as MilesDavis may seem a paradox. But there’s a lot in common with his ability to create so much musical movement with just a few notes. The intro melody of Chimera moves on three notes. Trumpet is doubled by pitch shifter and plays on microtonal inflections to imitate japanese shakuhachi’s dry sound, while moving over a liquid scoundscape and jumping between dorian and aeolian mode. When guitar emerges more distinctly after 3 minutes and a half, also a tribal rhythm enters in, joint by an almost Afrobeat rhythm guitar. The following solo by Henriksen explodes in a lyrical mass of reverberations, a powerful and enthralling hymn that guides us as if we were on the top of a mountain. It does not happen – from the musical point of view – nothing more than what has to happen.

Both move easily in the spaces of the other as if they were theirs. When Kollar switches from a series of open chords to a plucking on the low strings of the guitar in Solarization, then Henriksen answers with intimacy launching a Balkan melody. The interplay between the two creates once again a tension, which reaches its peak when the trumpet is filtered through a synth. Guitar answers with almost perceptible glitches. Faint Castles in the Air offers one of the most inspired solos ever played by Henriksen. David Kollar sits on the back this time, more concentrated on the low end of the spectrum, while the trumpet takes off in lyrical and dramatic matter. He increases the intensity at every single note, until the tearful closure by the guitar.

The anxious wall of chords in Roving Observer, as Kollar indicates, were inspired by Andrei Tarkovskij‘s Stalker, a director the guitarist nurtures a special love for. The disturbing atmospheres of the composer Eduard Artemev recur in this soundscape. It is like Helge Sten is adding his noises and StåleStorløkken is playing his violent eletric piano chords: ArveHenriksen feels at ease while he adds his piercing and atonal trumpet melodies here. Album’s closure is a sort of hymn, almost an accompaniment for the ending credits of a hypothetical film. Beyond the iCloud is built around a melody that ascends like a flight over the final scene of a film, like a drone that films the story progressively from afar. The guitar solo avoids any redundancy of notes, an almost Fripp-like sound, played on a few bendings and with much reverb. Eventually the initial melody returns and fades out slowly, before the credits.

Intimate, but still intense, passionate and subtle at same time. Illusion of a Separate World is two artists showing how easy is for them to create music that is immediate and tremendously complex, haunting and gorgeous at same time.

1. The Fifth Window 05:09
2. I Wonder How Many Miles I’ve Fallen 07:19
3. The Way To Hemingford Grey 05:54
4. Sunlight Cafe 05:57
5. Looking Back At The Amber Lit House 06:47
6. This Place Up Against The Sky 05:46
7. At A Small Hour Of The Night 08:03
8. A Wind Blows Down Turnpike Lane 04:27
9. Ten Mile Bank 05:36
10. The Green-Faced Timekeepers 07:52

When in September 2012 Steve Vai showed up on Guitar World‘s cover along with emerging shredder Tosin Abasi, it seemed like he was trying to bring some fresh air. After the golden era of the ’80s and’ 90s, the electric guitar had – according to few- lost its charm, had less appeal on new generations, despite the explosion of many shredders on YouTube, it was – arguably- less innovative than the past. Yet the Italo-American shaman had no doubts: guitar would have been the instrument of the future. When listening to Mark Wingfield‘s Tales from the Dreaming City it is easy to agree with him that guitar can still disclose planets of the musical system which we did not know about yet. The British guitarist seems not so much interested in what happens in the 21st century, while he is more busy projecting the instrument in the 22nd century. Under the shimmering melodies, the mysterious harmonies, the near-human screams of his guitar, he hides, visible to those who have the curiosity to search for it, a research that is pushing the boundaries of the instrument in a dizzying way towards and beyond the future. Through an use of technology decades ahead in comparison of the rest of the world conjugated with a melodicity that seemed to be forgotten by many guitarists, he creates a music of magic and mystery, bringing us into a David Lynch‘s movie, where he is the director.

Mark Wingfield is at his seventh solo work and two of them have been produced by MoonJune. He has now becoming a front man in the roster of Leonardo Pavkovic‘s label, being a regular collaborator with DwikiDharmawan, MarkusReuter, YaronStavi and AsafSirkis. The last two of them join him again after they did on 2005’s Proof of Light. Adding to those the long-standing collaborations with IanBallamy, JeremyStacey, RenévonGruning, ChristianKuntner. Finally. not to forget the six completely improvised albums together with KevinKastning. Wingfield is divided between the hunt for an alien sound on the guitar and the duties behind the mixer desk, which led him to develop a maniacal attention to detail. It is easy that his signature sound grabs the attention when listening back to his previous outputs, but above all a continuous research in the study of the instrument marks its career. Tales from a Dreaming City is a trio output with YaronStavi on bass and AsafSirkis on drums, as well as the additions by keyobardist DominiqueVantomme. A concept album driving us through melodies and solos. With the words of Wingfield himself: if Proof of Light was a collection of pieces I had written at the time, Tales from the Dreaming City is more a concept album. It is a set of pieces that have a common inspiration, an album of musical stories. For me, these stories are about a moment or an event in someone’s life, or a moment shared by a group of people. An album which pleasantly spans through sober moods à la ECM, hints of fusion-like soundscapes and surprising harmonic progressions, influenced more by contemporary tonal music orchestrations, rather than by jazz trios.

Tales from the Dreaming City start is a 22nd century guitar manifesto. The Fifth Window‘s starting melody climbs on a unpredictably modulating chord progression, before cascading through the diminished scale. Notes give rise to passion and tears through bendings, micro-tunings variations of the pitch -influences borrowed from Indian music, one of his interests- and though an use of the vibrato bar that would turn the heroes of the Floyd Rose bridges era pale. Each note is a world of its own, bringing out the devastation of most inner emotions, hiding the technological machinenery of the filter algorithms that processed it. Touch and effects reach a superior union: ideal union of feeling and machine, without any boundary between the two. A technological research on effects, but even more on basic guitar techniques: most of the unusual tones I get are from the way I play. I use a lot of unusual slurs, attacks, vibrato and pitch bends. I often don’t play any notes in a normal way. And because I’m not using the expected phrasing and I’m concentrating on creating different tones with my fingers, it tends to sound like I’m using a really unusual guitar sound or a lot of effects, whereas in fact I’m not.

Approaching The Fifth Window‘s solo, notes stay suspended in an alternative time-space combination: the initial note is maintained for a such as seven long seconds –Mark uses a sustainer added to his guitar. Then it is varied in pitch through the vibrato bar, which seems to give him the chance to reach any note and any change of chords. Whenever Wingfield seems to be about to go out of tune, we realize that he is always in pitch. Beck, Rypdal and Hendrix come to mind when thinking about guitar’s pitch intonation; but it is the example of wind and ethnic instruments that inspire the English guitarist. Mark Wingfield does not hide the fact that he has long ceased listening to music played by other guitarists, as he is more influenced by trumpet, oboe, voice, or perhaps by ethnic and classical music. A settling of ideas and listenings, which is at the core of his ability to rethink the sound of the instrument starting from the roots. These influences appear back grafted, chopped, fermented in his alien sound.

Machine and heart: he seems to be at the center of the convergence between the technical manipulation of sound and the visionary ability to see harmony and melody together. Long story short, at the intersection of Eivind Aarset and AllanHoldsworth. Tales from the Dreaming City‘s guitar is not just the continuation of what we appreciated in Proof of Light: we go even beyond the humanized, fringed, shouted sound, able to imitate the fluctuations of the trumpet, the treble of the voice or maybe the fluidity of the Indian sarangi. Taking just The Fifth Window‘s closure, it is a 22nd century guitar masterpiece. An ascending, then descending, nervous line, a force of nature doubled by a brilliant loop created live by Wingfield. Two guitars, which seem almost to dialogue with each other, resume part of the melodic lines we listened to in the previous part of the song or alternate past and ahead each other through the use of the delay unit. It climbs on the higher keys, adds the vibrato bar with slides or dry and fierce knocks. The filters seem to explode in a synthetic wah wah, the guitar lines respond each other and fall on a unformed mass of sound chaos. A devastating conclusion that tears at the heart.

Tales from the Dreaming City parts its way from the previous album thanks to the ability to create an even more homogeneous sound. It puts many influences on the table: fusion of styles rather than fusion. Wingfield says: I wouldn’t put it in any specific category. Most of the tracks on Tales From the Dreaming City are based firmly around a central melody and chord progression. To my ears, the melodic approach has something in common with the open lyricism of a lot of ECM jazz and harmonically it’s somewhere between that and classical music. There are elements of rock, and with the classical influences I guess you could say it crosses over into progressive rock. But there’s also a lot of improvisation going on. The ’70s /’ 80s ECM sound and classical music: the modal, dry, mysterious, sober and never overstated sound that made German label’s signature along with lavish orchestrations, with rich and extended chords showing what digital processing is able to by extending beyond the six maximum sounds capacity of the instrument. While listening to This Place Up Against the Sky‘s bridge the memory digs in the sound that distinguished European jazz since the ’70s onwards: the crystal clear cymbal sound by AsafSirkis, the harmonic progression led by MarkWingfield, who makes his way through a series of mysterious modulations placed on the background of Yaron Stavi‘s solo. The Colors of EberhardWeber or the TerjeRypdal of Waves era seem subtly quoted here. The three interact with heavenly pleasure erasing any difference between composed and improvised parts in the magic of the moment.

If Yaron Stavi is a longtime partner with Wingfield, on the other hand AsafSirkis,started working with him on Proof of Light. The three immediately showed a telepathic ability to dialogue with energy and kindness, even in completely unstructured contexts. Taking as example At a Small Hour of the Night, where the trio handles a magmatic and shapeless mass of sound to make it music. A vaguely modal soundscape opened by a guitar that first descends and then rises in a balanced give and take with the bass. Wingfield stops slowly on the tensions and the suspended intervals while Sirkis transforms the tension in a masterful way. In the central part Stavi is relegated to the lower register, everything is slowed down in a suspension of the time and space where Wingfield manages both the soundscape and the minimal leaps of the instrument with incredible ease. Time is suspended. Similarly in the ending of A Wind Blows Down Turnpike Lane, a song carried by a solid groove in mid-tempo, which is usual on most of the songs of the album, and with a recognizable and moving melody. The minute and a half coda of the songs made by Wingfield‘s solo shows shouts excruciating between aggressive slides or slurs, vibratos and the bar that goes up and down holding the listener’s breath.

Mark Wingfield attracts lot of comparisons, but there’s no one that’s good enough. Perhaps it is his ability to tell stories and give form to unusual and distant melodies with great easiness, a storyteller with few notes. Less is more, with this statement the English guitarist praisedJohn Abercrombie and his unrivaled ability to create a world with so little. If Wingifield’s sound seems so far from Abercrombie’s, it is nevertheless very close to the simplicity of the stories he told. Like in Looking Back At The Amber Lit House, a delicate and mysterious ballad, built around a simple yet sophisticated melody. The solo by DominiqueVantomme playing mostly on a continuously repeated note – like he already showed he is able to do on his Vegir– tells with mastery half of the story that Wingfield expands in the next solo. We do not seem to listen the chord changes, as much as a melody is floating, evoking new emotions at every touch. In Tales From the Dreaming City the music is telling a specific musical story which I’ve composed. When we play this music, the point is to interpret it with the intention of telling those musical and emotional stories as best as possible. When it comes to the solos, that’s an opportunity to expand on the story, to improvise something in the moment about the musical story that the composition is telling.

Tales from the Dreaming City is an emotional quest, almost a science of emotions, a journey into the discovery of hidden possibilities: the possible explorations of an instrument that has so much to reveal, the possibilities hidden in simple yet unexpected melodies. If you ask LeonardoPavkovic what he thinks of MarkWingfield, he will answer that he has not reached half of what he can do. Listening to what the guitarist did so far in his career, it seems incredible to think that there is still so much to discover. Yet, if Tales from the Dreaming City is such a quantum leap as it is, we can consider that other worlds are possible and MarkWingfield just begun his travel for the unknown.

Tales from the Dreaming CityMark Wingfield

1. The Fifth Window 05:09
2. I Wonder How Many Miles I’ve Fallen 07:19
3. The Way To Hemingford Grey 05:54
4. Sunlight Cafe 05:57
5. Looking Back At The Amber Lit House 06:47
6. This Place Up Against The Sky 05:46
7. At A Small Hour Of The Night 08:03
8. A Wind Blows Down Turnpike Lane 04:27
9. Ten Mile Bank 05:36
10. The Green-Faced Timekeepers 07:52

A few metallic notes played from inside the piano to create a barely hearable and atonal atmosphere, on the lowest and highest registers. Then a scale guides us through a slowpace andante: this is the prelude to the serious and solemn theme of the ZZ Top anthemic piece Sharp Dressed Man, which I feel in the gut while Jamie Saft plays it at the piano. An overflowing minor chord, resonating in the concert hall, fiddling with the 5th blues note and tearing out its fundamental essence. The keys on the lower registers take out our soul, there is really nothing else to say. There is no beginning, there is no preparation: we start immediately from the end. There is nothing else to say. Everything is all there.

This is the dead time, a definition psychologist Michel Imberty uses to define the era changing move in Gustav Mahler‘s Das Lied von der Erde in comparison to the past: ‘Dead time is something like the prescription of time. For a moment time does not exist anymore, in other words there is no more change, movement. There is psychic disinvestment. The voice singing in this void seems without timbre, without individuality, it is a neutral voice, without a past, without a future ‘[Imberty, The music and the unconscious, in Enciclopedia della Musica]. Jamie Saft works for the majority of Solo A Genova in this empty space, full of romantic density and suspension of time. A live dedicated to Great American Songbook, ranging from Bob Dylan, Joni Mitchell, Stevie Wonder and ZZ Top to CharlesIves and the Naima or Blue in Green standards, as well as some of his own tracks.

One of the things that always seems to be about to rage Jamie Saft during an interview is to be forced to speak about genres or to distinguish between high and low music culture. He studied piano and keyboards, receiving both a classical and jazz education, the latter with such teachers as Paul Bley, Geri Allen, Joe Maneri. But he grew up in the ’80s Brooklyn, where melting pot has become a reductive word – even naive – to express the means of the interchanging cultures. He was born in Radical Jewish Culture (RJC) and in klezmer music, he will homage in the first two albums at his own name. But that will be just one of the influences in his career alongside jazz, dub, metal, soul, and a thousand other tags in more 160 albums. The key moment of his career is when meeting John Zorn and the Tzadik label in the 90s. A long association was born from this and this led him to play with all the avant-garde New York scene. He began then joining the Electric Masada, Jamie Saft Trio, New Zion Trio [All About Jazz], where he made trips with acoustic and electric piano, synth, electronics, noise. Saft developed during those years a sound powerful and crystalline at the same time, between classical virtuosity, merging that with jazz and klezmer scales, mainly devoted to the electric piano.

Another partnership became important in his career, and it is the one with the RareNoise label led by Giacomo Bruzzo, where he felt at ease when proposing courageous, unexpected ideas. He bagan that joining forces in the complex Metallic Taste of Blood with Eraldo Bernocchi, then collaborated with Wadada Leo Smith – their 2014 Red Hill is one of the most beautiful free improvisation works lately! – with Roswell Rudd, with Bobby Previte and Steve Swallow. He played with the last two in the New Standard Trio and in of the most amazing works in 2017, that Loneliness Road featuring an unexpected crooner such as Iggy Pop. His endless discography includes tributes to Bob Dylan, whom along with Joni Mitchell and the ‘Itals’ (Sinatra, Dean Martin) is one of his biggest loves, a folk work in duo where you may find him playing the lap steel guitar, doom- metal sounds next to soul R&B, and noise – not to forget Merzbow among the collaborations.

It is almost surprising to think that only now he releases a solo piano work for the first time. Recorded on March 3, 2017 at the Teatro Carlo Felice in Genoa, Saft tells the plan started from afar: “I conceived a piano recital for the first time in 2007, when my dear friend Giuseppe Vigna invited me to perform this type of concert in Florence. It was a very difficult time for the United States, since it was important for me to be able to present contemporary American music as an example of positive art, art that had left its mark on the world, which had in moments of hatred and negativity, which had promoted a path of growth for mankind “.

And the tracklist of the evening reflects this choice. While alternating the seemingly easy melodic structures of Curtis Mayfeld’s The Makings Of You or Stevie Wonder’s Overjoyed to jazz and classical standards, it creates an atmosphere of unexpected flow, an ideal red thread linking all works together. He always seems to keep us in balance, suspended in the air in the audience, through an wide lyricism, a singing voice, like an anthem recalling the classic American tradition from Copeland on, the American songbook, showing us a great and boundless spaces. And in the meantime he never loses respect for replaying the piece, an act of love towards music, made differently than a pianist like Brad Mehldau would do, analyzing it in its deepest meaning, but instead bringing out its heart, like an act of deference. Take Overjoyed, placed after the serious Sharp Dressed Man, during which he always seems to avoid any risk of trivialization or to override the song with his presence. It makes you feel the full crystalline sound of Steinway Model D: ” Stevie Wonder’s songs are based on a very strong and deep architecture, so I did not feel the need to transform this song.What I wanted was to recreate the positivity and hope that Overjoyed is imbued with, mine is a very respectful and humble homage to a true masterpiece of modern popular music “.

Neverending term of comparison of the solo piano, it is even trivial to take it for example at times, but Jamie Saft may recall Keith Jarrett. Thanks to a shimmering recording, almost ECM-like, we can her shades of the late 80s / beginning of the 90s Jarrett. This is the moment when he plays for the last time in long sets, lasting over thirty minutes, and explores longer improvisation structures, when he reflects on the melodic element with a different apporach, more mindful and heartful at the same time. Words that could be applied to Saft while he plays Human by Jimmy Jan and Terry Lewis merged together with his Gates: the manipulations on the bass register, the ornaments on the melodic passages, the use of the pedal to make the chords resonate and the arpeggios are means that serve a deep and inner lyricism, which could have come out of the most intense moments of the Vienna Concert.

So ColtraneNaima‘s standard also surprises us with a virtuosic cascade of arpeggios, which Saft uses not by means to change the harmonic sense of the piece, but to reflect on the thousand facets of the melody and making it last as much as possible. We find romantic arpeggios as well in the torrential New Standard, from his album with Swallow and Previte, here showing at most his classical background. And the passage to Pinkus, yet another piece of his, this time from Caliwa by New Zion Trio, keeps this mood of nineteenth-century romanticism, albeit strongly veined with blues, full of strongly beaten chords and flurries of notes.

Next to these moments we find the early twentieth century composer Charles Ives‘s The Houseatonic At Stockbridge. He drives us into an atmosphere of mystery and playfulness at the same time. Saft’s words introduce it: “I’ve been working on this track for decades and I still feel like I’ve just scratched the surface. As a student of the great composer and clarinetist Joe Maneri in Boston in the ’80s I was often asked to work on authors like Schumann and Schubert, but I really could not tune into their music. While with Ives I succeeded. A revolutionary author who has explored the microtones, the harmonic dissonances and the coexistence of different musical textures on the same level, anticipating many evolutions of decades. His music is expressed in classic European forms but with a typically American perspective and a profound understanding of the manipulation of sound. For me he is one of the greatest composers of all time. ”

Jamie Saft plays an intense, humble tribute in the deepest sense of the word: at any moment he does not seem to be playing, but to listen to his favorite music, as if he put those on the vinyl in front of us and we were chatting about it. We are there with him while he tells us how beautiful this music is.

In his autobiography, composer John Adams tells the grand finale of Grand Pianola Music: ‘It starts with a long and sustained seventh dominant chord throbbing and vibrating for sixty bars before flowing into a virtual Niagara of piano arpeggios. What follows is an absolutely familiar melody, a kind of Ur-Melodie. You think you’ve already heard it, but you can not remember where or when. It’s actually an original theme ‘[John Adams, Hallelujah Junction, EDT]. This passage came to my mind when I listened to Variety of Rhythm, a suite composed by the Swedish guitarist Samuel Hällkvist. A study of listening to rhythm and auditory perceptions, managed in a fashion similar way to the way we study visual illusions mechanisms, such as those painted on the cover. And that takes us into a world of archaeologies of sounds, at any moment we recognize Ur-Melodies – in this case more Ur-Rhythms– that we do not remember to remember, as in the case of the example of John Adams.

Variety of Rhythm is the fourth solo work by the Swedish-born, but Denmark-resident guitarist Samuel Hällkvist. It is also the third in the ‘Variety of’ series following Variety of Loud (2012) and Variety of Live (2015). Listening to his discography we can see a different direction, an experiment focusing on a different aspect comparing a record to the previous one. He uses a preferably clean guitar base, combining it along a work focused on rhythms and polyrhythms and developing melody and harmony in a way functional to the rhythmic development of the piece. He gives only a few solos and prefers to work on the structure of the pieces, using sounds ranging from the American jazz of Bill Frisell to math rock, Pink Floyd’s psychedelic, avant-garde, electronics, Asian music, complex progressive instrumental -never lavish, even sometimes subtly ironic, i.e. in style of Mats / Morgan Band. No surprise Samuel worked with Morgan Agren, as well as mentioning the collaborations, among others, with Pat Mastelotto, David Torn – who makes an appearance also in this work- and trumpeter Yazz Ahmed, whose Le Saboteusewas among the most interesting releases in 2017. And he is a regular member of the Swedish veteran proggers Isildurs Bane, who worked with Steve Hogarth last year for Colours Not Found in Nature.

For this work he assembled a team of 12 musicians and recorded parts of the suite between Scandinavia, Paris, Japan, Antwerp, Portugal and the United States. Each of the teams in the various locations (see below the tracklist) has a part of the total 43 minutes of the piece, which are developed without interruption in three main sections of written composition, developed in a structure of sonata-form of presentation/recapitulation and interspersed with improvised segments. The beginning of the first part, Double Adagio, is lead by Qarin Wikström‘s vocals together with Meshuggah‘s Dick Lövgren basslines. They build the first ostinato on the beat of metronome brought by the vibraphone of Kumiko Takara, while drums adds the first polyrhythm. As Hällkvist describes in the Variety of site, which has been created to explain the piece’s musical analysis and its construction, we hear no more than three chords repeated for multiple beats while all the instruments dialogue between a rhythm of 3 and 7. We feel a dancing and cheerful gamelan, above which Hällkvist builds intense lines with guitar lead distortion full of reverberations up to four minutes, when drums stop for the last final intro chords.

Behind Variety of Rhythm there is a strong vision to guide the composition of this work, which is linked to the perception cognitive process. Gestalt psychology analyzed in depth the perception, placing it for the first time at the center of this discipline. In 1912, Max Wertheimer, while studying visual illusions, developed the concept of form, which represents the unitary organization of elements at cognitive level that our senses received individually. The perception scene is already full of the relationships between the elements we are sensing, such as in the experiment of two close lamps that turn on and off quickly: our eyes tends to perceive them as a single lamp. Our eye, as well as our ear, is able to grasp the interactions between the elements that occur outside the perceptions field. The visual example of this mental process is hinted by Hällkvist himself with the title of one of the main pieces, The Necker Cube, a figure created to work on the ambiguity of the cognitive illusion. Our senses collect more than what is in the sum of the individual parts.

Hällkvist follows this path to develop the relationship between the rhythms in his work. At any time the listening act rebounds like a rubber band between the various levels of the piece through a double circuit: on one hand the dialogue between the beats, meant as meters, on the other those between the rhythms, meant as complex constructions of accents and quotations of signs and cultural references. For example, in the short improvised interlude glued between the first movement and the second, Tete-a-tete / Blivet, which begins around 5 minutes, while not perceiving beats, the listener continues to bring the rhythm within him/herself while listening. Second part begins with a slow and psychedelic carpet on which Hällkvist’s guitar and Liesbeth Lambrecht‘s violin bring a theme out of phase that goes up and down between the higher and lower register. The drums comes out after about two minutes leaving room for delay guitar lines, using a well-known 1980s David Gilmour effect. He chooses a overused effect chosen by many guitarists, making a very risky move: instead, Samuel builds a relaxing and spatial moment. Pete Drungle‘s keyboards, bass and drums are coming back in creating a growing tension while moving through the whole chromatic scale. We are on a journey starting from Pink Floyd until the early Porcupine Tree. A moment worth the price of the ticket.

At the end of the part, vibraphone brings an obsessive theme on the same beat that we listened on the previous moments and we still feel in ourselves, then the following improvisation by David Torn builds an intense soundscape, which recalls the sounds of his last solo on ECM, Only Sky. The third part begins around 26 minutes like the previous one, with a few notes brought by the vibraphone dialoguing with the drums. This time music swings from quarters to triplets and it changes the underlying chord at each change of rhythm. The rhythms is slow while we hear all possible interactions between different patterns. When our ear focuses on the similitudes with minimalism, here there is a reminiscence of gamelan or a pentatonic referring to oriental music or prog rock or American folk.

Listening to Variety of Rhythm takes place at a level deeper than just listening. We perceive an underlying development of the song, hidden behind the the cognitive illusions. It is not a trick, but rather a real dialogue between the rhythms within the work, in which the listener takes an active part by finding new details for each listening.

Composer Gustav Mahler said that a Symphony had to be like the world, it had to include everything. Now, after Mahler’s world included no longer than Brahms (no reduction intended), if you take a glance at this statement today, it means to include everything, meaning really everything! So: classical contemporary, jazz, big band, but also Warner Bros’ cartoon soundtracks as well as 60s movies, not forgetting techno music, heavy metal, progressive rock, rock’n’roll, afrobeat. A truly postmodern pastiche, however never an end in itself. Enter the Andromeda Mega Express Orchestra.

Vula, released in 2017 for Alien Transistor after a five-year preparation, is the fourth work by this 18-piece orchestra, which includes brass, strings, vibraphone, guitar, drums, synths. It is led by Daniel Glatzel, who is accidentally also the main composer of the pieces. Musicians who come from a multiple background, ranging from Ensemble Intercontemporain to Tony Allen’s Afrobeat, to Kenny Wheeler, to the Baroque. But also Hermeto Pascoal, with whom they worked live last year. Formed in 2006, they acquired gradually a stable line-up and a very distinguished sound, despite the multiple influences.

The start of the album is already a manifesto of the aesthetics: a short free parenthesis gives way to the turbulent 13 minutes of In Light of the Turmoil, where everything happens. An intro on the vibraphone opens the way to the drums. With a sustained rhythm immediately paves the road for the majority of the themes of the piece intertwined with each other in a sonata-form recapitulation. A swirling soundtrack that seems to come out of a 60s film gives way to a dark pentatonic theme on the bass, then temporarily modulating to other chords while underneath guitar brings a delicious rock’n’roll. Short breaks and then the themes start to intertwine between drawn deadlifts and changes of time before the return of the main pentatonic theme on the strings, duly revisited, enlarged, crooked. Five minutes have passed and In Light of Turmoil already shows a sparkling, thrilling, fierce, tugged orchestration. The listener is holding when is about to cry out for the exaggeration. When is about to protest over too many quotations, another more beautiful one arrives.

The word Vula comes from the Tumbuka language, spoken in Malawi, where AMEO have had the opportunity to work, and is used to indicate storms. A concept that runs through the whole album, but specifically in In Light of Turmoil. After the central break, lead by piano around five minutes, the elation for whirling winds is not finished. Time to take a breath and the second part is even more aggressive. The rock’n’roll gets more and more tense and intricate until all the instruments converge on a G chord. A brief staccato and then the climax with the whole orchestra on the chord in fortissimo. A moment worth paying the price of the ticket, while the placid coda first takes back the quiet part we heard around five minutes, then the initial themes, duly slowed down and stripped of their power.

It is an exciting moment for those orchestras that experiment on the verge of multiple genres. Trying not to apply general categories where not applicable, but when listening to AMEOs along with the recent experiences of Darcy James Argue’s Secret Society and Nathan Parker Smith reveals many common ideas, rather than mentioning influences, more about the vision and manipulation of the orchestration. Straddling the jazz tradition, which after the Maria Schneider Orchestra in the 90s has gained back interest, and contemporary classical ensemble.

But the game of quoting can start even from different orizons: from John Zorn‘s Naked City, through the Yellow Shark’sFrank Zappa, or even the canterbury school and the unknown contemporary prog orchestras – just an exercise of quoting, two examples like the French Camembert and the Italians Breznev Fun Club.

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The third track Lakta Makta Ha begins with a delicate orchestration that recalls the Maria Schneider Orchestra and a descending theme that leads first to a trumpet solo and then to a repeated variation of the initial theme, which slowly settles for about 10 minutes. AMEOs have gone through pieces in which there is a strong writing, to others more free-oriented; they worked hard in the studio, as in the Bum bum album, or more live, as in the previous work. Vula is the work that expresses the best balance between post-production of the studio and spontaneity of the live. As in the -unpronounceable- fourth track qwetoipntv vjadfklvjieop, an improvisation between classical avant-garde and jazz made of excruciating screams, chromatic lines in an atonal environment and of instruments that interact above short recorded additions of orchestra pieces.

Finally J Schleia takes back the intricately orchestrated style envisioned in the second track. It starts with a Tony Allen-style afrobeat, moving with misleading and truncated signatures while guitar, strings, brass and synth alternate in an interaction for the whole piece. Glatzel’s sax solo dialogues with the acidic lines of the synth leads until the calm mood – as it were possible – of the second part, in which the Bachian counterpoint of the orchestra revisits the theme.

In Vula there is strictly everything as in the Mahlerian symphony. But the focus is never on the postmodern aspect of the quotation, but on the amount of funny ideas soothing the ear and engaging the listener, never make allowing it to stand still.